suzilightning

the other night it was use up a poached chicken breast and, since it is cool here, i minced it up, added it to some sauteed onion and shallots. flour and chicken stock with some carrots, peas and potatoes. into a pan and some short pastry on top for homemade pot pie.

hey - am i the only one making soup around here??!! made a vegetarian soup on wednesday - it was dreary, rainy and cold here. veg stock, shallots, leeks, carrots, a plum tomato about to get wrinkly, bay leaf, some fresh oregano, chiffonade of fresh spinach and tiny little egg noodles. finished with a splash of white balsamic vinegar and a poached egg. some good peasant bread to finish.

yesterday for john it was whole wheat spaghetti with red roasted peppers, artichokes, sun dried tomatoes and shrimp. cinncinati chili over the pasta for me -technically it was 3 way since i had minced shallots, grated cheddar and there were beans in the chili. tonight it was use up a poached chicken breast and, since it is cool here, i minced it up, added it to some sauteed onion and shallots. flour and chicken stock with some carrots, peas and potatoes. into a pan and some short pastry on top for homemade pot pie. there is enough for john to have an individual one at work monday. there is a turkey breast upstairs in an apple cider brine. to be accompanied by some haricot verts and yellow beans from the freezer, some mashed potatoes and gravy. am planning the american thanksgiving menu...

not really a baker anymore - used to bake for independent sale and then also worked part time in the bakery section of a restaurant - but wanted to do try out some things. yesterday did two recipes: the apple cake from dorie greenspan's book and a riff on a recipe i saw demoed on tuesday night - cranberry harvest bars. when i do the apple cake again i will either halve the number of apples or increase the "batter" half again just so all the apples have some sort of a "cake" coating. this really reminded me of a clafouti. still tweaking the bars - original called for eggs, butter, flour, sugar, 2 cups of cranberries, 1 cup of walnuts, ground cinnamon, ground cloves and orange zest. i subbed out extra light olive oil and some orange juice for the butter and reduced the cranberries by half(husband's request) and the nuts by 1/4. good but still needs a bit more tweaking till i am happy.

very 50's/60's but my grandfather used to make a glaze of 1 package of onion soup mix and 1 pint of red french dressing and 1 jar of apricot jam. heat up and then pour some into the cavity then glaze. use the rest to keep lacqering the bird every 15 minutes for about 1 hour. pop used to freeze any leftover glaze in 1/2 pint containers and pull them out to defrost when he wanted to do chicken thighs or legs or another meal of cornish hens. he used to make white and wild rice - before wild rice was well known - and usually made green beans.

going to Getty's store after helping my grandfather, pop, mow the cemetery and having a root beer float. there was nothing better. as a youngun' around 1960, taking a "try to calm the kids down enough to go to sleep" drive and ending up with a Skybar. each person got their own little pillow of taste. i loved the marshmallow. church potluck dinners. my pop's smooch - elbow macaroni, tomatoes, ground beef, onion, peppers and some ketchup. fish salad - whatever fish was leftover was mashed up to make fish salad with miracle whip, minced onion, celery salt and then put on white bread or turned into some cooked elbow macaroni. never knew about tuna salad until i was an adult when first nan and then pop died the funeral salad - jello, cottage cheese, pineapple, sour cream, mini marshmallows - hey, i grew up on the east end of long island not the south?! steamed pudding with hard sauce. we would spend july and august going around harvesting the different berries then come home, make up a not sweet batter then fold in the berries. the batter would go into coffee cups that had been greased - with criso - and put into a pot with boiling water for about an hour. the hard sauce was nothing more than softened margarine, a box of confectioners sugar and some vanilla extract that is mixed together. traditionally it would include rum but we didn't. uncup the pudding, cut in half and then add the hard sauce for dessert. pop would try to convince us that liver was good. didn't work though our new england boiled dinner was more likely tounge than corned beef. finally i used to just make it for him if he didn't ask me to eat it. every thanksgiving until he died - my uncle can's coffee gelatin for thanksgiving dinner dessert. strong coffee, some sugar and knox gelatin. waffles with bacon and sausage after church on sundays. cinnamon toast( i hadn't met johnnybird or his famous outrageous toast dope yet) with tea for dinner - or white rise with butter and sugar. the guy who would come each october with his fresh macintosh apples we would buy and wrap to keep over winter so we could have pies and applesauce. my mom's incredible doughnuts, lemon meringue pie, apple pies and the green creme de minthe in case you had a bad stomach. standing on a chair to make my grandfather's breakfast - sunnyside eggs, bacon, toast and coffee that you can stand a spoon up in.

or i can send you my address and you can ups it to me? (just kidding - kinda sorta). i agree about changing the cocktails you use it in ... and if you don't like it put it on your don't buy again list. we all have one.

whenever i go to my butcher i get a bag of clean bones - free. (DUCKS INCOMING) usually about 4 bones. i stockpile them and then about every other month make a stock with them, maybe adding in a bit of ox tail or beef shin. definitely worth doing.

poulet a la normandie in the oven for tomorrow's dinner. himself is due back about 7 pm. i'll probably be at the hawkwatch until 5pm. thinking about serving it with some thinner egg noodles and some zucchini and yellow squash that i am craving. think that i will do a quick saute and finish with some chicken stock i have in the fridge. john is off on business this week and i am taking him out for his birthday(6 nov) on 31 oct since he hates halloween and i have to work until 5 pm anyway. i am going to try a cincinnati chili version using some chopped sirloin and ground buffalo that i may be able to do if i have a day/half day off. will serve with some spaghetti, minced shallot(instead of onion) and some shredded cheese. john won't eat the beans though he might eat the oyster crackers if i had them.

took some leftover baked sweet potatoes and heated with some chicken stock, mashed it up and heated until warm. finished with a bit of orange juice and served with some sauteed bacon and crusty bread. have a version of cincinnatti chili made with beef and buffalo on tap for next week when we are supposed to cool down.

dinner tonight will be sauteed chicken breast with artichoke hearts and a sauce with olive oil, crushed olives, capers and finished with some lemon and olive oil. leftover sweet potatoes and some green beans. also pulling together foods for the husband to take down the shore tomorrow night for the owners meeting this weekend. homemade 1000 island dressing, poached chicken breast, slider rolls for lunches; eggy potatoes, applesauce, maple syrup, french toast for breakfasts; containers of homemade chicken soup, noodles with pot roast and beef stew with some peasant bread for dinners. i am craving lasagna but it is supposed to be good both days this weekend so between the paying work and the hawkgawk will just subsist on stuff from the freezer which DOESN'T include lasagna. hoping for a rain day on my day off next week so i can do a good cook...have meatballs to poach in marinara and some lactaid cottage cheese to drain and doctor to stand in for the ricotta. i can taste it now

Mmm. Yeah. Let's talk about that. the daube was really, really good. i made it on friday then served it saturday. the pork is another keeper. what about the bison? my spousal unit prefers it as it is low in fat but has a nice flavor. i sub it out for everything from pop's smooch to burgers to meatballs and meatloaf.

lunch at 230 today just before i went on the floor. homemade tomato basil soup that i drizzled with some balsamic olive oil and accompanied by a slice of pumpernickel bread that i spread with some tangy blue cheese.

husband will not touch lamb - i can't even cook it when he is home. keema and lamb burgers when he is away on business or visiting his family.

there is an apple cake (or as johhnybird's grandmother would say appfle kucken) in the new greenspan book i want to try that is more apple than cake. i have all the ingredients but don't know if i have the time..... guess i should go upstairs and do it now,

at present have at home: tinned anchovies(shhh... don't tell the hubs) tinned clams, tinned salmon and tinned crab so i can make chowdah and cakes or timbales or my world famous green goddess salad dressing. at work i have cryo tuna. i do prefer it for making salad in a hurry - unless i am poaching fresh.

ohhhh...burgers...have to pull some bison and do them. dinner tonight(saturday) will be a variation on the beef daube from dorie greenspan's new book but served with some wonderful bread to soak up the sauce. the variation is subbing out half of the wine with beef stock. tasted a piece of the beef and it is really good. the smell of the sauce is haunting me. sunday will be a split day for us at the hawkwatch. i'm planning to make a pork loin with orange and serve it with rice... if i get off in time. if the birds are flying john may be buying me dinner.

gimlet and a glass of old smuggler...too tired/bored to eat tonight. course i had macaroni and tuna salad, ensure and cantaloupe with cottage cheese for breakfast/lunch. time for finishing laundry and bed. quiche last night with some stuffed mushrooms.

my husband and i live in nw new jersey. from september - november we are running a hawkwatch 7 days a week including sundays. during the middle of september(broadwing migration) we are out in the field about 10 hours per day and food is eaten while inputting data. i also - in my real life - work every other sunday. when i do work, i leave something for the hubs to pop into the oven with extremely detailed instructions (he is an engineer and ocd) so it is ready to eat half an hour after i get home. it may be a roast chicken stuffed with lemons and garlic, rubbed with olive oil and dusted with herbs and salt, sitting on a raft of shallots and carrots along with some baked sweets or russets. it may be a meatloaf that we eat with mash and use the leftovers for sandwiches during the rest of the week. i can always pull a veg from the things i blanched and froze during the summer. when it turns colder and we are done with the hawkwatch i will cook or more importantly bake on sunday. many times, since i am off on fridays, i will do a pot roast, chili, or coq au vin that we will enjoy together on either saturday or sunday. growing up when i did i tend to cook once to maximize my oven heat so do multiple products at one time then we will have food we just have to heat up while we read the paper after doing yard work - or shoveling snow!!! and sometimes it is fun to do breakfast for dinner - eggs, pancakes, french toast... because of our diverse schedules(and the fact i hate to eat after 6 pm) my husband and i schedule our "sunday dinners" on most sundays, many saturdays and every other friday. for us it is a time to eat together, catch up and plan our week. we are two hours removed from my husband's family and all of mine are virtually gone. we are private people here though i grew up in a house with an open door and a soup pot on the stove to feed whoever dame in and needed it. recently we had a wonderful sunday dinner with three of our neighbors celebrating julia child's birthday. good food, good wine, good music, good conversation and good friends.

took advantage of a cold rainy day and no birds flying to use a gift card from my secret santa. went to tanti baci: http://tantibacicaffe.com/ . a plate with 4 pieces of grilled garlic bread came out. i ordered the soup of the day which was butternut squash. it wasn't too sweet and had a hint of orange at the finish. main was wild mushroom ravioli sauced with a simple tomato and basil sauce with a side of meatballs. the mushrooms were great and the sauce was wonderful the meatballs were a little less soft than the last time i had them. i ate all the soup and half of everything else. i also ordered a piece of chocolate fondant cake to go so i had half of that as my 5pm snack. dinner and snack for thursday. 27.00 total

i had eggs scrambled hard, home fries and corned beef hash ... at about noon. does it count?

i was first in line for the library's copy. since i don't own it i copy out my recipes - there are 18 that i want to "own". i think the most fun for me, though, were the stories about each of the recipes and the other essays - mashed potatoes, beets, cheese, boeuf a la ficelle, "complaining" in the nicest way about a cheese that wasn't quite ripe, etc. the writing was some of the best in general and definitely some of the best food writing i've read...and i've been a librarian for 30 years. yesterday, during a food shop mainly for nonperishables, farina and golden raisins got added to my list so i can try the caramel-topped semolina cake sometime this week. sent the husband in with a side order of anne leblanc's pistachio avocado. unfortunately the local store didn't have avocado oil so i subbed some walnut oil. the pistachio oil is ordered, though.

yesterday i was craving - CRAVING - the curry puffs at a local thai restaurant so after the gym and a power food shop i picked some up along with some spicy mushroom soup. today my brunch was one of my favorite things: 2 eggs scrambled dry, corned beef hash and home fries. had some homemade corned beef in the freezer, some local potatoes that had been baked and stopped to pick up 2 dozen local eggs. john's lunch today was the fredonia version of beef on weck. didn't have time to make kummelweck rolls so i did a cheat and used some potato bread sliders, brushed the top with a bit of egg wash, put fennel and a really coarse sea salt on top and popped them in the oven for about 10 minutes. very thinly sliced roast beast, thin sliced swiss(we use Finlandia Heavenly Light - the only lower fat swiss that tastes like swiss), some shredded iceberg, one of john's tomatoes and thousand island dressing. made a side from Dorie Greenspan's new book - avocado with walnut oil. will see how he likes it.

saturday i worked and when john got home from the hawkwatch we went down to the lake, sat and enjoyed some beer and each other. dinner was bison sliders with cheese and carmelized onions, tomatoes and green beans with a vinegarette low on the vinegar. sunday i worked again and went to a local supermarket afterwards. dinner was pasta with shrimp, clams, parsley, roma tomatoes and garlic with olive oil and the wine the clams were cooked in.

miracle whip, pb and any batter i have made.